Nadal fights back to deny his Wimbledon nemesis

Simon Briggs

Lukas Rosol arrived on centre court on Thursday wearing a square of bright blue medical tape over the nape of his neck. After the superhuman performance he delivered against Rafael Nadal at Wimbledon two years ago, you wondered if the patch might be covering up a data port, like the one Keanu Reeves sports in The Matrix.

That five-set win has gone down as one of the great Wimbledon upsets. It wasn't just the result but the way it was achieved. People talk about the mysterious "zone" but few have ever gone so deep into a mindless state of perfection as Rosol did that day.

Ace. Forehand winner. Backhand winner. Those were the currencies he dealt in, particularly when the roof closed for the deciding set. The nervelessness he showed in shooting down tennis' toughest competitor was almost inhuman.

When Friday's draw threw up a reprise of Rosol's instant classic, the natural response was to assume that lightning could not possibly strike twice. Yet that was only half right, for there were real flickers of electricity on centre court on Thursday.

After a quiet opening period, in which the first eight games were shared with no undue drama, Rosol treated us to a 40-minute flashback. He reeled off a sequence of six out of eight games, during which the world No.1 was powerless to resist.

"What a draw this is," Nadal must have been thinking. The fates had saddled him with an even worse start than David Moyes endured at Manchester United.

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If there is one sort of player he dislikes facing in the early rounds, it is somebody with the power to hit through his legendary defensive qualities. And nobody has more power than Rosol.

The only mercy this time was that the roof stayed open. This was far from a windy day, yet it offered just enough ambient variation to make Rosol think a little about his shots.

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At 4-2 up in the second set, he looked invincible. But then, little by little, he stopped playing like a virtual-reality simulation and started to show signs of fallibility. Meanwhile Nadal was starting to chip a few more returns back into play, and slow the runaway juggernaut just a touch.

If there was a turning point, it came in Rosol's next service game. He beat away with his sledgehammer of a racket, a man desperate to nail down his advantage, and yet each ball came skimming back until suddenly Rosol left one short – a rare titbit for Nadal to feast on. And feast he did, with a classic uppercut of a forehand winner, followed by a huge air-punch of celebration.

"He was playing amazing," said Nadal after completing a breathtaking 4-6, 7-6, 6-4, 6-4 comeback win. "I really couldn't do anything for a lot of moments in the second set. But I try to keep fighting, wait for my moment, and find my moment."

Rosol did not go quietly. He contested the tie-break gamely, and even had a point for a two-set lead. But Nadal boomed another forehand winner of his own, and from that moment the current was flowing through him, not through his opponent.

"If that forehand went out, maybe I will be here with a loss," Nadal said later. "Is difficult if you go two sets down against a player like Rosol.

"But I think I played with fantastic energy during the last three sets. Very positive. Very quick with my legs. Very quick mentally. When I had the chance to touch the ball with the return, every return was in, and a good one. Is the best level I played on grass since long time ago."

Were Nadal any ordinary mortal, we would look at these early struggles – 2 hours 55 minutes against Martin Klizan on Tuesday, 2hr 44mins against Rosol on Thursday – and say, "He's burning himself out, how can he have anything left by the final weekend?"

Yet this is a man who actually seems to grow stronger the more time he spends on court. Nadal finds that the "sensations" – as he describes the feeling of fuzzy felt on strings – improve incrementally with each grunt, each discus-hurling forehand.

"Many people say now that grass court is not good for Rafael," said Toni Nadal, the tennis sage of Majorca, in a speaking engagement in the Lavazza marquee on Wednesday morning.

"I say people have a short memory." Toni's point was that his nephew made five straight Wimbledon finals between 2006 and 2011 (excepting the year when his knees were too bashed-up to let him compete). And after the way Nadal has dealt with two threatening opponents in the opening rounds here, another deep run must be on the cards.

In the worst-case scenario, he could have found himself facing Ivo Karlovic on Saturday, the 211-centimetre Croat who is one of the few players with a bigger serve than Rosol's. Instead, Nadal has what looks like a far more comfortable opponent in Mikhail Kukushkin.

These early rounds have thrown up some fine entertainment, both on Thursday and in Novak Djokovic's tight four-setter against Radek Stepanek on Wednesday night.

But as the big four keep rolling, we have yet to find "The One" who can beat the system.